Town eyesore on the market for $5 million, but buyer beware
This duplex once owned by Elizabeth DeLorean, an ex-wife of automobile magnate John DeLorean, sits in disrepair just south of Tropical Drive. Photos by Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Jane Musgrave
When John Dragonas bought a seaside home in Ocean Ridge that was owned by one of the ex-wives of notorious automobile executive John DeLorean, it could have been his ticket to riches.
Instead, the 78-year-old spent years living in his van in the driveway of the dilapidated one-story house on Old Ocean Boulevard before crushing debt forced him to drive away from the home and his dreams.
“It changed my life,” he said. “It’s been the most difficult situation I’ve ever been in.”
Now, nearly two years after Dragonas lost the house and 21 years after longtime resident Elizabeth DeLorean died, the boarded-up house just south of Tropical Drive has captured the imagination of others.
Howard Goldsmith, a Boca Raton investor who seized the house after Dragonas defaulted on a $2.1 million loan, has put the house and an adjacent vacant lot that DeLorean owned on the market for $5 million.
Interest has been intense, said Dorian Hayes, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker Realty. Architectural renderings posted on the company’s website show a modern 5,000-square-foot two-story house that could turn the overgrown property into a homeowner’s dream.
How Coldwell Banker Realty envisions a new home at the site. Rendering provided
“There’s going to be a bidding war,” Hayes predicted, noting that oceanfront land in the area is scarce.
But, she acknowledged, before buyers start driving up the price, there are hurdles to overcome. “We’ve got to go through a few steps,” she said.
The property
The steps are not baby ones, according to those who have been through the process and know how difficult it can be to develop property along the ocean — particularly one as strange and unconventional as the former DeLorean home.
Surrounded by invasive Australian pines and Brazilian pepper trees, the house is actually a duplex. Built in 1952, it sits at an odd angle with one side hovering within feet of the property line.
The land where the house is located has been divided into two separate parcels. Those two tracts would have to be combined with the vacant lot to the north so an expansive home could be built on what would be a roughly half-acre site.
Most important, like nearly all of the land along Old Ocean Boulevard, all three parcels are seaward of the state’s Coastal Construction Control Line.
That means the Florida Department of Environmental Protection largely dictates what can be built on the environmentally sensitive land where the whims of nature and the strength of hurricanes are ever threatening.
Faced with a lawsuit from a homeowner who paid $6 million for a crumbling oceanfront home and found he was unable to improve it, the Town Commission in 2023 relaxed key development rules for about eight homes along a narrow stretch of Old Ocean Boulevard between Anna and Corrine streets.
However, farther south on the oceanfront road, questions remain about what can be done with the DeLorean house, which many town residents view as an eyesore that should be torn down.
The DeLorean years
Robert Larkie, a retired contractor who owned the land with DeLorean for nearly 15 years, said he discovered that development rules blocked him from making almost any improvements. The vacant lot was particularly problematic.
“We couldn’t even trim the hedges or put a picnic table on it,” said Larkie, who lives in Boynton Beach.
His relationship with DeLorean began shortly after she bought the duplex and vacant lot in 1980. Needing a place to stay, he said he knocked on the door and asked DeLorean if he could rent half of the duplex. She agreed.
In 1984, he convinced her to let him divide the land, so he would own one half of the duplex and she would own the other. “I’m a contractor,” he said. “I don’t rent.”
DeLorean didn’t appear to need any financial help. When her 14-year marriage to John DeLorean ended in 1969, she received $400,000, the couple’s nearly 2-acre estate near Pontiac, Michigan, and payments totaling $375,000 for 15 years, according to news reports. The divorce came long before the onetime General Motors wunderkind in 1982 was accused of trafficking in cocaine and eventually forced into bankruptcy.
However, Larkie said, Elizabeth DeLorean was amenable to his offer and agreed to joint ownership of the vacant lot.
“We got along great — no fights, no arguments,” he said.
But they lived their separate lives.
She loved the beach and her two dogs, driving along North Ocean Boulevard with them in her lap. She haunted garage sales, buying knick-knacks that filled her home, Larkie said.
Although DeLorean talked about her former husband, Larkie said, he declined to elaborate beyond saying that she told him that she came up with the name for one of her husband’s signature cars, the Pontiac Firebird.
While DeLorean was happy at the beach, Larkie said he was incensed by how much he was paying in taxes, particularly for the vacant lot that town officials said he couldn’t use. He said he went to the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser, hoping the office would give him a break on his taxes. His efforts failed.
Rules for redeveloping the duplex were also onerous, he said. While the roughly 1,000-square-foot duplex could be torn down, a new structure couldn’t be any bigger, he said.
“You can’t increase the footprint. You can’t build higher,” Larkie said he was told.
In 2000, he’d had enough.
He sold his share to Dragonas. DeLorean, then in failing health, did the same.
DeLorean died in 2004 at age 81. The woman, who was regularly featured in society pages in Michigan when she was married to John DeLorean, died in obscurity. A one-line obituary announced her death. A Cremation Service Of The Palm Beaches handled the arrangements.
The Dragonas years
Even though she no longer owned the duplex, Dragonas said he allowed her to stay in her former home before her death.
“She was delighted to be back in the place she loved so much,” Dragonas said.
Dragonas, meanwhile, was trying to figure out — without success — how to redevelop the site of the duplex and build on the vacant lot. Lawyers, engineers and architects told him that development was possible, but he said he could never get a straight answer from the town.
While reluctant to talk about his experience, he said a former town official told him there was concern that he would try to mimic the three-story duplex that in 2015 was built just south of the DeLorean house.
The old duplex is next to a duplex built in 2015.
Dragonas said he didn’t want to build a giant structure. “I wanted to find people who would respect the site and not put a towering high-rise in there,” he said.
But, he said, he couldn’t figure out a way to move forward. “I had a dozen people walk away,” he said. “I could only hang on for so long.”
The house didn’t have air conditioning so he lived in his van. His health suffered. With no financial resources, he had to walk away. “I dearly miss that property,” said Dragonas, who still lives in South County.
Hopes and headaches
For Goldsmith, the land has produced its own share of headaches.
He was cited twice in June for code enforcement violations —one for not trimming the hedges and another for boarding up the windows of the house. While he eventually trimmed the hedges, the $100-a-day fine for violating a town code that requires buildings to have windows is still accruing. By the end of January, it stood at $22,000.
Hayes said Goldsmith is not a developer. He just wants to sell the property. While she is working to combine the three lots into one parcel and is making plans to seek a state environmental permit, she said she is frustrated by the lack of direction she has gotten from the town.
A letter she got from town officials outlines the process — meetings with town officials, submitting an application and complying with town development laws. But it doesn’t say whether Goldsmith’s plans would be approved.
And, it includes a word that stymied Larkie: footprint.
According to town rules, “if you build on the vacant lots or change the footprint of the existing structure on the other lots, a variance is required” because the coastal construction line is west of the property, town officials said in the letter.
When the Town Commission relaxed coastal construction rules in 2023 for land at the north end of Old Ocean Boulevard, Town Attorney Christy Goddeau said Goldsmith would still need to get a variance to develop DeLorean’s property. And, she said, variances are hard to get.
A property owner must prove that there is a justified reason to throw out town zoning laws. The owner must show that the property itself is unique and that he will suffer undue hardship if forced to abide by the rules. The hardship can’t be self-created and economic factors alone aren’t sufficient.
Given rules protecting environmentally sensitive oceanfront land, it is unclear if a variance would be approved.
Town Manager Lynne Ladner declined comment. When asked about potential hurdles, she sent The Coastal Star town development regulations, zoning maps and other documents.
Hayes said she is convinced Goldsmith’s plans will be approved. A team of lawyers, architects and engineers is working to make it possible.
A continuing eyesore
For longtime resident Terry Brown, the situation is maddening. Steps should have been taken years ago to address the sad state of the DeLorean property and do something about it, he said.
“There’s peeling paint. You can see rotting wood. You’d say, ‘Why does this exist in Ocean Ridge?’” he said.
If he had his way, the town would raze the house and turn the property into a natural area, adding to the parcel it owns to the north.
“This has gone on for more than 20 years,” Brown said. “The town people and the residents have to walk by and look at that structure. Why hasn’t the town done anything more than cite the guy for a couple of boarded-up windows?”
